The sweeping brush of change in Gen3 isn't limited to the cars and driver lineups, with two former drivers settling into challenging FIAFormulaE management roles. JBLAutosport hears from GaryPaffett and Rossiterracing about their learning curves 📝
In motorsport, the usual path to management is thus: start out as a junior employee, work your way up, and eventually you can earn the keys to one of the many kingdoms of racing.
Perhaps it’s footballing management royalty Arrigo Sacchi who summed it up best, having never embarked on the journey to become a footballer: “I never realised that in order to become a jockey you have to have been a horse first.” "The years as a sporting director at DS shaped me hugely. The things that I learned from Mark Preston as team principal and from Thomas Chevaucher [mean that] I feel that I'm fairly well prepared to take on this quest"Rossiter has largely found that out the hard way in his first few races in charge of Maserati MSG’s fortunes.
“Obviously the years as a sporting director at DS shaped me hugely, the things that I learned from Mark Preston as team principal and from [Stellantis motorsport chief] Thomas Chevaucher, I learned a huge amount from them standing alongside them in the garage. I feel that I'm fairly well prepared to take on this quest.”
“And then there's been so many different teams. I'm very fortunate to have had a very diverse career from racing in America, in Japan, in world championships. I think there's something to take from all of those experiences and pull them together, and try to create the dream team. "I can understand emotionally how they would be feeling at that point and how hard we can push them because – in understanding different drivers, you learn how hard you can push each driver" “I wasn't sure I was going to experience that, but now I have! And what an amazing group of mechanics that we've got in this team.
“The team manager position opened up for last season for season eight, which I took on. My responsibilities and everything within the team is developing year on year really, so taking on more responsibility with regards to the whole supporting side of the team and the running of the team on the race weekends.”
“We're still doing it [with Rast and Hughes]. We've only really started; it takes a long time to understand what a driver needs really. We've been working with Jake for a couple of seasons as our reserve driver, so he has a good relationship with the team, but we hadn't seen him in races really in this car. We're learning what he needs and where his strengths and weaknesses are.
Paffett was an integral part of setting up the team now known as McLaren when it was a new entry under the HWA Racelab banner“The guys talk about the first race in Saudi in season five, and it was just college [a learning experience],” he says. “Even the guys we had involved were so experienced in motorsport, but just the difference Formula E brought us compared to anything else we'd done was a shock.
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